Final Fantasy XIV Has Never Looked So Phenomenal

GR - "A Japanese gamer and graphic artist going by kodama_SS has put his efforts towards presenting Final Fantasy XIV in its most beautiful form. With a little bit of photo editing and a whole lot of time, these 70 images present the game at its finest."

[bwazy]

I still want my 80 bucks back for the terrible excuse they called a CE. Oh that and the terribad game.

[Micro_Sony]

Has anyone noticed that since Squaresoft and Enix merged, not long after Final Fantasy X, that the games sort of took a nose dive? FF13 is horrific, but I started it and because of my misplaced sense of accomplishment, have decided I want to get 100% completion. It is a horrible game, but like many have said, including myself, when is the next REAL FF coming out?

I am more worried about this merger than anything else. look at the games put out since the merger, final fantasy XII and Kingdom Hearts II are probably the only two worth mentioning. Not to even add games like last remnant and star ocean, I do not care if you played 360 or PS3, it sucked. It has just been a nose dive in the wrong direction the last eight years.

This Neir is probably going to add to the list of subpar games. I hope not. Maybe I should just play Mass Effect II for the 5th time, or just play FFX again for the 10th?

[Hicken]

XIII wasn't for everybody. We get that. Get over it. Not every game made by your favorite company will be for you.

XII was good, but it's as different from the typical FF formula as XIII is, simply in a different way. Newsflash: lots of people (here, especially) hated or at least disliked XII as well.

They haven't made that many games this generation, being plainly honest. Most of what they have made was on handheld, where so many of the so-called "Square fans" ignore the good stuff they released, like The World Ends With You.

Nier is a spectacular game, by the way.

[roadkillers]

It's not that it was ignored, release The World Ends With You on PSN/Steam (mobile if necessary) along with all the Kingdom Hearts spin-offs and I'll gladly purchase.

[GoldenPheasant]

My personal favorite is actually 12, taking all of them into account. ... and I played FFVI (III) on SNES when it came out...

[Hicken]

WEWY wouldn't work on Steam. Possibly on a touch screen smartphone, and maybe on the Wii/Move.

My point isn't so much the game's availability, however. It's about how quickly people criticize them and leave out good games like that. Hell, I was disappointed in Front Mission, but that didn't make me think "Square Enix sucks." I haven't played a KH since 2, but I haven't forgotten that the others exist, and that people enjoyed them thoroughly.

I have never NOT enjoyed an FF. VIII is my favorite, while VII is my least favorite, but I've loved everything from V to XIII. And XII, to me, probably had one of- if not THE- most solid stories in the series.

Each FF is different, and it should be treated as such. Even the sequels maintain this. Yuna prefaced her game- which started the trend of direct sequels- by saying, "This is MY story," to differentiate it from the game in which Tidus told us, "This is my story." I dunno about others, but I went into the game expecting it to be very different from X, and I wasn't let down.

I expected XII to be different, and I wasn't disappointed. It didn't have a whole lot in common with previous FFs, but that's alright; X was pretty different from IX, too.

Almost every time this sort of thing gets brought up, I say the same thing: judge the game based on how well it does what it sets out to do. Then you can decide how well it stacks up against other games; otherwise, your decision is mostly emotion, or nostalgia, or whatever. But it won't be a fair impression.

All that aside, I don't think Square-Enix has fallen off as much as many people would like to have you believe. On the contrary, I think gamers, in general, have become more picky in both good and bad ways; and with the proliferation of the internet, being reasonable has been replaced by being vindicated by the support of others. Instead of "Well, I shouldn't expect this character to act like this one did in this game," people instead think "This character sucks!" and plenty of people agree with them.

People don't judge Super Mario Galaxy by the same criteria as a mainline Super Mario game, because they're very different games that play very differently. The games in the FF series are like that: similarities abound, but the games play differently from one another.

Anyway, as long as they don't pull a Capcom, I'll still give Square-Enix the benefit of doubt.

[Pozzle]

I think it's a bit too late to be complaining about the Squaresoft and Enix merger. It happened almost ten years ago.

[kaveti6616]

"Has anyone noticed that since Squaresoft and Enix merged, not long after Final Fantasy X, that the games sort of took a nose dive?"

No. Nobody has ever said that before you.

[Cyb3r]

Such a shame the actual game wont look half as good as that fan art

[Troll-without-Bridge]

The actual game looks gorgeous.

[specialguest]

I don't think current gen consoles could pull that off in real-time. This is almost Pixar-like quality.

[Prototype]

Ive talked to people who played 14 and came back to 11 because they (meaning other people) felt 11 was an overall better MMO

[Zichu]

If they manage to pull something amazing out of there a**es when 2.0 comes out I might consider playing it again. The photo's they have shown for 2.0 look really good, obviously they won't look exactly like that.

But the weapons look amazing. I hope they add in a ton of content and turn the game around. It's quite sad to see a game go down like FFXIV did.

[Ethereal]

Those are really nice. I really looking forward to the PS3 version and it's relaunch. The new team is looking to make really cool changes.